Many are bashing Mt.Gox, but there are two sides to a story. Mt.Gox has been a powerful force for good concerning Bitcoin.

Bitcoin is experiencing exponential growth, something we knew could happen, but with too much centralization i.e. pressure on Gox we find weakness that affects everyone. The market will sort this out but as a community we can help (not least because we mostly are the market).

Apparently new exchanges are being planned but we can immediately help by simply supporting and recommending other exchanges.

I'm guilty too. Although I have accounts with multiple exchanges when it comes to serious trading I look first to Mt.Gox. That should change. It may be inconvenient, but fairly easy to look to other exchanges first. If we all do this, and recommend it to others, we will rapidly shift that monstrous 80% of all BTC trading that occurs with one exchange, to the increasing detriment of us all.

Two great exchanges that come to mind are BitStamp.net and CampBX.com, both of which to my knowledge having never had a security incident.

Many are bashing Mt.Gox, but there are two sides to a story. Mt.Gox has been a powerful force for good concerning Bitcoin.

Bitcoin is experiencing exponential growth, something we knew could happen, but with too much centralization i.e. pressure on Gox we find weakness that affects everyone. The market will sort this out but as a community we can help (not least because we mostly are the market).

Apparently new exchanges are being planned but we can immediately help by simply supporting and recommending other exchanges.

I'm guilty too. Although I have accounts with multiple exchanges when it comes to serious trading I look first to Mt.Gox. That should change. It may be inconvenient, but fairly easy to look to other exchanges first. If we all do this, and recommend it to others, we will rapidly shift that monstrous 80% of all BTC trading that occurs with one exchange, to the increasing detriment of us all.

Two great exchanges that come to mind are BitStamp.net and CampBX.com, both of which to my knowledge having never had a security incident.

That's a great looking site! Thanks, yes, as Bitcoin grows globally we should highlight country targeted exchanges like this one in Canada. Such exchanges may eventually accommodate global trading too.

BTW, everyone might also take a moment to read this Falkvinge article:

Agreed; since Gox has most of the market power, we should boycott the Gox.

Let's get gox goxxed!

Not to say nobody should use them anymore; I don't want them to disappear from the webs. But they def need to let the other exchanges get ahead, especially since they can't handle everything on their own (as seen in recent days, and in the past.)

Ditto, have had good service from them. I spoke with them two days ago and it was said that they have hired a number of new staff and will have much better customer support at all levels going forward.

That's a great looking site! Thanks, yes, as Bitcoin grows globally we should highlight country targeted exchanges like this one in Canada. Such exchanges may eventually accommodate global trading too.

BTW, everyone might also take a moment to read this Falkvinge article:

Those threads are related to the very real problem of centralized BTC trading, but they offer technical solutions. I agree we should attack the problem on all fronts, but this thread is a simple proposal about people just adjusting behavior a bit.

I really can not recommend BTC-e. Their site doesn't work with firefox. And they don't respond to help requests.

We all take a remarkable risk with exchanges. Any smart exchange operators should do all they can to develop trust and reliability.

I like how BTC-e shows all the pending trades--this is so much better than Gox which is a black box.

Another thing is I don't like how CampBX does the "know your customer" bullshit. What exchanges operate outside the US mafia territory?

And last, bitcoin has to develop anonymity by default. I've heard of mixer services built right into the client that I think are great ideas.

You're right about developing trust and reliability, and so far some exchanges have done a good job IMO. They include (besides Gox) CampBX, BitStamp, TradeHill, and BTC-e to name a few.

Mt.Gox has many more trades than BTC-e and a different looking order book view.

Any exchanges that deal with moving money are pressured into anti-money laundering know your customer (KYC) procedures. That's the only way to be seen as a legitimate part of the existing banking system, which is global.

I agree about building better anonymity channels into Bitcoin software. I believe that will happen as things evolve.

That's a great looking site! Thanks, yes, as Bitcoin grows globally we should highlight country targeted exchanges like this one in Canada. Such exchanges may eventually accommodate global trading too.

BTW, everyone might also take a moment to read this Falkvinge article:

Any more exchange suggestions? Come on! Let's get some pledges! I pledge to look to exchanges other than Mt.Gox first!

I agree with most the article but seems more to me this was not the correction people are looking/hoping for. This was a system failure and reboot, GoxBTC Screen of Death.

Plus after more thought, I'm not so sure I believe a damn word of Gox's PR's. Think how easy it is to flood Gox with orders, cause unacceptable lag and cause a cascading failure as all the other bots freak out. Conspiracy me is thinking this was another ddos on Gox through the trade engine.

I have been supporting other exchanges, but the problem is for me and most/many is the ease of getting the evil fiat into and out of Gox.

My point being that mast people are not crypto, exchange/trading nor computer experts and see the world in a different way. If there is only one major exchange and the largest number of people possible are voting owners then how is that so bad?

Make a startup called 'Secure bitcoin holdings'. You make a pool of offline coins and use multisig for secure transactions.

Now approach every single existing Forex trading company. You become their 'banking' partner for bitcoins. When customer pays into your cold wallet, your software notifies the FX company how many funds to credit internally in their exchange.

When customer withdraws, instead of asking the bank to send a wire they ask you to send the coins. Let them handle the fiat side of things they just need a competent non clownshoes operation with funding for insurance that can handle the bitcoin transactions.

Now professional trading is available. Big traders on these forex sites can now decentralize to trade locally for cash and other instruments. For instance I would pay in $100,000 sitting on the exchange in fiat waiting to trade. I would sell bitcoins out of a store and if I needed more coins, do a trade and withdraw to customer using the FX company.